Death of a Nobody (16 page)

For a moment she could not place the name. Then it came to her. ‘Miss Harding from next door but one?’

‘Yes. I can see through to some of your back garden from my bedroom window, you see. She seemed to dig out something from the soil, but I couldn’t see properly. Perhaps she was just looking for that cat of hers — he’s a devil for the birds, that one.’

Sarah looked at the patch where she had buried the keys: the soil looked freshly disturbed, but then it was only a couple of days since she had dug there herself. She had to resist the urge to rush to the spot now and burrow there before Joe Philips’s astonished eyes. She said, ‘She shouldn’t have come in here without asking. I’ll go and tell her so now.’

‘No use now, I’m afraid, miss. She’ll be round at her sister’s this afternoon. Always is, on a Friday.’ He hoped he had not got the old girl into trouble; she wasn’t a bad old stick, when you got to know her. And they were the same generation; there was a sort of bond in that.

Sarah pulled her eyes from the spot where she had dug with her trowel, forcing herself to turn away when her senses were screaming at her to check whether her secret had been discovered. She drove back to the shop, her mind in even greater turmoil than on her journey to the cottage. She scarcely knew the woman. If the old biddy had found the keys, what did she plan to do with them? Sarah vowed that she would not be blackmailed, but she could not convince herself of her determination.

Though it was within half an hour of closing time, the shop was busier than ever, with the telephones shrilling their interruptions to the direct exchanges between customers and staff. Sarah vaguely recognized the large and comfortable figure with the weatherbeaten face who was standing outside the doorway of the shop. She thought at first he was a man in search of a family holiday. It was only when he introduced himself as Sergeant Hook that she was able to place him as the man who had unemotionally recorded her statements about her last hours with Jim Berridge.

He said, ‘Good afternoon, Miss Farrell. Superintendent Lambert has a few more questions to ask you, I’m afraid.’ Although he began almost apologetically, he knew he was going to allow no refusal.

But all she said was, ‘Not here, please.’ It was her professional self asserting itself: detectives seeking her out for a second time in a crowded shop would surely excite speculation among her staff.

Hook smiled. ‘No, not here. We’d like you to come to Old Mead Park, please. There are some discrepancies among the different accounts of what happened there on Tuesday night, you see.’

He had watched her park her car. It was only two spaces away from his, so they walked together to the vehicles. With this large figure pacing at her side, Sarah Farrell felt already under arrest.

21

Sarah Farrell knew the way to Old Mead Park well enough. She was conscious of Hook and Lambert in the car behind her, escorting her watchfully. Perhaps if she had followed them she could have pretended she needed guidance, but she had a feeling they were now beyond such deceptions.

When she had locked her car and stood awkwardly beside it in the visitors’ car park, Lambert came purposefully across to her. ‘Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Farrell. There are some contradictions in the statements we have been given about this business. I thought it best that we got the parties concerned together; it seemed the quickest way to sort things out.’ He turned without inviting any comment from her and went swiftly into the block of flats, leaving her to follow with Bert Hook. The superintendent seemed very sure of himself, she thought. That was rather disturbing.

George Lewis, observant as ever, had seen them arrive. He came out from his porter’s office, buttons gleaming on the dark green of his uniform, hair immaculately parted and brushed over his sleek head. He smiled at Lambert, wondering about the woman who trailed twenty yards behind him with Hook, far too professionally polished to voice any enquiry about her. ‘You said you’d like to see me, Superintendent. I can see you’re busy at present, but when you think I can be of any assistance, you know that I’ll be entirely at—’

‘As a matter of fact, you can help us now, George. I’d like you to lock up your office for a little while and come up to the penthouse flat with us.’

Even George’s impersonation of Jeeves was not proof against a little note of surprise in the voice as he said, ‘Mrs Berridge’s apartment? Yes, of course I’ll come up, but—’

He did not complete the sentence, for Lambert had accepted his agreement with a nod and passed on towards the lift. As with Sarah Farrell a moment earlier, he had not even considered the possibility of refusal, and his energy carried them along in his wake. Bert Hook was left to shepherd them both into the lift. That was what sergeants were for, he thought without resentment. He had worked with Lambert long enough to feel the excitement of anticipation.

It was Ian Faraday who opened the door of the penthouse to them. He showed only a little surprise at the trio assembled behind Lambert. His own apprehension was such that he felt obscurely that there was some sort of safety in numbers. As the group moved into the drawing room, Gabrielle’s only visible reaction was to add two more cups and saucers to the tray she had prepared in anticipation of Lambert and Hook.

Lambert looked at these preparations and said after a second’s consideration, ‘No refreshments just yet, if you don’t mind, Mrs Berridge.’ She looked full into his face for the first time, struck by a tiny nuance in his tone. She was the only person in the room who appreciated at that moment that Lambert, apparently so thoroughly in control of the situation, was himself under considerable strain.

It was Gabrielle who said, ‘Shall we sit down, then?’ and disposed them in a semi-circle around the ample easy chairs and sofas of the huge room. She realized too late that she had assumed the role of hostess, even in this macabre situation. The laughter which sprang unbidden to her lips at that thought would have issued as hysteria: she found her fist at her mouth to prevent it emerging.

Lambert said calmly, ‘Thank you all for coming here. Sergeant Hook and I wanted to see you for a simple reason. All of you have told us lies.’ He glanced briefly round the four faces. No one sought to contradict him, though Faraday glanced briefly at George Lewis, wondering what the porter’s role was in clarifying all this, speculating about exactly how much he had seen. Lambert, finding his statement apparently accepted, said, ‘Dishonesty is not an unusual phenomenon in murder investigations, unfortunately. The problem for us is to sort out which are the important lies: hence this meeting.’

Five yards from him, Sarah Farrell looked as if she was about to speak. She was exchanging looks with Gabrielle Berridge. Lambert, preoccupied with the solution to this murder, had almost forgotten that he had brought wife and mistress into the same room. But at this moment they looked more like companions in distress than bitter enemies.

He said, ‘I take it we are agreed that there is no room here for false emotion. Every person in this room, including the two representatives of the law, is glad to see James Berridge removed from the world where he was perpetrating such evil.’ He looked round the room, challenging them to contradict him, but there was no reaction, save for a single curt nod from the widow.

George Lewis, sitting on the edge of his chair in his carefully buttoned uniform, felt a need to account for the presence of a porter in this catalogue of hate for a murder victim. He said quietly, almost proudly, ‘That includes even me. He killed my friend Charlie, you see.’ Then when the others looked at him interrogatively, he added, ‘Charlie Pegg, who did a lot of joinery work in here, and in the other flats. We went way back, you see, Charlie and me. And Mr Lambert thought I might be of use here.’ With his credentials thus established, he settled a little more comfortably on his seat. He was the only person in the room on a stand chair; that seemed to him the appropriate thing.

Strangely, in view of these seating arrangements, the porter was the only one in the room who looked relaxed. Hook had produced his notebook and waited watchfully; Lambert was poised to conduct the interplay of this assorted sextet; the other three had given up any attempt to hide their tensions as they sensed a crisis.

Lambert said, ‘Miss Farrell has left a hectic business to come here. Perhaps we should deal with her first.’ Sarah Farrell’s face showed that she thought that scarcely a privilege. ‘Your statement told us that you quarrelled with the deceased on the night he died. That he then struck you several times, then left you in a distressed condition at about seven o’clock on that evening, driving away in his own car.’

Inevitably, the eyes turned to look at what they could see of her injuries. The graze on her chin was scarcely visible now, but even beneath careful make-up the technicoloured flesh around her healing eye was apparent. She sat a little more upright in the armchair as she felt their scrutiny, then winced as the pain from the bruise in her side stabbed acutely into her poise. She had not consulted a doctor; she wondered again if she had a cracked rib. Her left eye had been practically closed when the CID men had last seen her. Now the swelling had declined and it was fully open, so that she was able to train both her bright blue eyes on Lambert.

She had made no move to confirm or amend her original story. Lambert spoke to the room at large, but his eyes never left the woman who had been the dead man’s mistress as he said, ‘One of the curious things about this case is that we never located the second set of keys for the victim’s car. Until today, that is. This afternoon, a dutiful citizen brought them into the police station at Oldford.’

Sarah Farrell spoke like one in a dream.

‘I had them. I buried them in my garden.’ She felt rather than saw the surprise the statement brought to those around her.

‘A foolish action. Why?’

‘I — I panicked. I found them in my bag after…’ Her voice faltered away as her eyes dropped to the rich green carpet.

‘After you had driven James Berridge’s car on the night when he died.’

Her blue eyes were too revealing. There was fear in them now as they flashed up to look into her tormentor’s face. The others thought she might deny it. Instead, she said, so quietly that they strained to catch the words, ‘How do you know that?’

It was Hook who looked up from his notebook to tell her. ‘Your taxi-driver came forward and told us. It was no more than his duty.’

She nodded. A tress of fair hair dropped over her forehead and she was suddenly very weary. ‘If it hadn’t been him, I expect you would have found out from someone else.’

‘I expect we should, yes. Especially after the forensic examination of the car produced one of the earrings I saw you wearing on that same night.’ Lambert saw no harm in developing a notion of police omniscience among the rest of the group. ‘You drove Berridge back here on Tuesday night, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. That was what we had the row about at my place, after you’d left us. I said I wasn’t going to drive him anywhere, after what I’d heard.’ She paused, staring past him now, seeing nothing of the room or the people in it, but only the horror of discovering the real nature of her lover in that small neat lounge of hers. ‘I don’t know how many times he hit me. Eventually I screamed that it was enough, that I would do it.’

‘Why did he want you to drive him?’

‘I never found out. I expect he had some idea that he would hide in the back of the car if necessary. And I’m sure he intended that he’d take my car to leave the area, when we’d finished here. He had things to collect from this flat, he said.’

‘But you didn’t stay to find out what.’

‘No.’ For a long moment, whilst all of them willed her to go on, she was silent. Perhaps she was only now contemplating the idea that she might have contributed to Berridge’s death by her desertion. ‘He checked that there were no lights on in the penthouse as we turned into the drive. Then he told me to drive right into the garage, because he didn’t want the car to be seen. He left the door open and went up to the flat to get something — he didn’t tell me what.’

‘And what did you do?’

‘As soon as he was gone, I slipped out of the car and was off down the drive. I took the car keys with me and slammed down the up-and-over door to delay him.’

Lambert said, ‘You had your own set of keys to the BMW?’

‘Yes. Jim had given them to me when he got the car, so that I could get into it if he was delayed when we met. On Tuesday night, he kept his own keys in his pocket and made me use my set. I knew he was going to take them back when I’d finished driving — it was another way of telling me that we were finished.’

‘I see. Go on, please.’

‘Well, I found when I began to move that I was pretty well all in, and too knocked about to run. I thought he’d be coming after me in the car at any minute. I couldn’t understand why that didn’t happen—I thought it must have taken him longer than he’d expected to get what he wanted from the penthouse.’

She paused again for a moment, but no one else spoke. All of them were picturing the scene, with the injured, terrified woman on the unlighted country lane, stumbling through the darkness and listening fearfully for the sound of the engine of the BMW behind her.

Eventually, Bert Hook said, ‘But when you got to the public phone, you didn’t dial an emergency call for the police to protect you.’

She looked at him as if she had only just registered his presence, though he had come into the room alongside her. Perhaps his open countryman’s face reassured her. Certainly, she seemed to dismiss the nightmare she had been reliving as she said calmly, ‘No. I don’t think it even occurred to me. Whatever Jim had done, I didn’t think of betraying him like that. From what you now say about his activities, perhaps I should have done.’

She did not seem to consider the possibility that her story might not be accepted. Now that she had told it, she had a curious detachment, as if she was more concerned with getting the details right than with defending herself. Lambert looked at her for a long, intense moment, whilst the others waited for him to press her about the keys and why she had hidden them.

Instead, he said, his attention still apparently upon Sarah Farrell, ‘Other people, who knew James Berridge for what he was, have also lied about that night. His wife, for example, who perhaps had most of all to gain by his death.’

Only Hook, who had watched his chief at work so often before, realized how subtly Lambert was playing upon surprise and apprehension to persuade people into speech. The fish rose unthinkingly now to the fly he had cast so precisely before her. When Gabrielle Berridge snapped, ‘What on earth do you mean by that?’ there was no outrage in her voice, as she might have wished, but only shock.

Lambert controlled his irritation that she should attempt denial, even now. He said deliberately, ‘You were not in Stratford at the time you said you were on Tuesday night. Neither was Mr Faraday. I advise you not to try to continue that deception. It was unwise of you to attempt to persuade your hotelier to lie for you, Mrs Berridge.’

Gabrielle’s face was very white now beneath the dark hair. Her mouth dropped open a little, then closed determinedly, as if she felt it had got her into trouble enough. It was Ian Faraday who said, more in puzzlement now than as an assertion, ‘But the theatre —
The
Winter’s
Tale
. Surely we provided you with enough evidence—?’

‘The programme Mrs Berridge produced so conveniently was never very convincing. And Sergeant Hook discovered how you acquired the ticket stubs you thoughtfully provided for us.’

Faraday’s head turned the few degrees to focus on the officer whom he had thought so placid and unthinking. Bert Hook said almost apologetically, ‘I was able to retrieve the ticket stubs for the previous evening’s performance as you did, from the refuse bins outside the theatre. They were still there at ten o’clock, much later in the morning than you discovered yours.’

Neither Faraday nor the woman whom he intended should be his wife made an effort to deny Hook’s assertion. And the CID pincer movement continued to close in upon them.